Weekend Hashtag Project: #WHPtelephone
Weekend Hashtag Project is a series featuring designated themes & hashtags chosen by Instagram’s Community Team. For a chance to be featured on the Instagram blog, follow @instagram and look for a post announcing the weekend’s project every Friday.
The goal this weekend is to take creative photos and videos that feature telephones. Some tips to get you started:
- Keep an eye out for unique or quirky telephones. Pay phones, rotary dials and even cell phones all come with the stories of their time and place. Experiment to see how you can bring that into the story you tell with your photo or video.
- You can also use your mobile phone as the subject of your photo and as a framing device. Turn its camera on, turn up the brightness and hold it at a distance, then photograph it using a friend’s device.
- The sound of a ringing telephone can convey a lot of different emotions. Think about the different sounds a telephone can make if you’re planning out a video.
PROJECT RULES: Please only add the #WHPtelephone hashtag to photos and videos taken over this weekend and only submit your own photographs and videos to the project. Any image or video taken then tagged over the weekend is eligible to be featured right here Monday morning!
The Week on Instagram | 120
News
- Newsweek: Photo Essay: Instagramming Ukraine’s Revolution
- Esquire Magazine: Before and After: Venezuela on Instagram
- New York Times: David Guttenfelder on the Second Camera
Get Involved
- Weekend Hashtag Project: #WHPtelephone. View photos from the last project, #WHPfromwhereIwalk.
Around the Community
Athletes often have some interesting birth names. But who knew a football team could inspire one of the oddest middle names we’ve ever heard? Welcome to the world, Cydnee Leigh 12th Mann. Yes, that’s her name. Her legally binding name. … Continue reading →
Instagramming the State of the Union Address
To see more photos and videos from tonight’s State of the Union, browse the #InsideSOTU hashtag and explore the U.S. House of Representatives location page.
Tonight, U.S. President Barack Obama will deliver his 5th State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress. The State of the Union is delivered each year, allowing the President to report on the condition of the United States and propose new agenda initiatives.
In the run up to tonight’s speech, the White House (@whitehouse) has been sharing a behind-the-scenes look at the work that goes into drafting the address by having different staff members—including the President’s speech writer, policy council and broadcast director—take over the account.
To follow the State of the Union and the customary response from the opposing political party through Instagram, explore the #InsideSOTU and #SOTU hashtags and follow these accounts:
- Rep. John Boehner, Speaker of the House — @speakerboehner
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader — @nancypelosi
- Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican Conference Chair offering SOTU response — @cathymcmorris
- Pete Souza, White House photographer — @petesouza
The Worst Superhero Movie You Never Saw
There’s a new “Fantastic Four” trailer, but, no, it’s not about that “Fantastic Four,” Fox’s planned reboot that’s been penciled in for a 2015 release. The trailer is about the other “Fantastic Four,” the Roger Corman-produced version from the 1990s — the one you’ve never seen.
Remember Salvador Dali’s illustrations of Don Quixote? Well, apparently he gave Shakespeare’s classic love story the same treatment. Brain Pickings’ Maria Popova — who is all over the literary art beat — writes,
In 1975, the iconic Spanish surrealist illustrated an ultra-limited, presently impossible to find edition of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, published by Rizzoli in a red silk slipcase and featuring 10 lithographs by Dalí. Only 999 copies were published.
For a larger sampling of Dali’s R&J work, head over to Brain Pickings.
There seems to be a spate of these young writer parody lists going around right now, but my favorite has got to be this one, from The American Reader.
10 Under 10: Writers to Watch
Daniel Yu (Age 5)
“The Case of the Missing Pajamas”
Where were you born?
San Jose, California.
Where do you live now?
Same place in a different time.
What was the first piece of fiction you read that had an impact on you?
Are You My Mother?, undoubtedly. I recently read Maniac Magee and was undone.
How long did it take you to write your first book?
Eight months. It was premature.
Did you ever consider not becoming a writer?
I might have had some luck as a short-stop, but those days are gone now.
What, in your opinion, makes a piece of fiction work?
Show me a piece of fiction that works. In the end, it’s all failure: you swirl some glue on it like so much construction paper, sprinkle glitter and spangle…some of that glitter reaches its destination—it is preserved in the Elmer as a fossil in amber. Then there is that spangle that sticks to the sweat of your hands, your fingertips. That’s the prize of a writer: spangle and sweat—sometimes simultaneously, most often not.
What was the inspiration for the piece included in the “10 Under 10” series?
It’s all very simple, even pat. I couldn’t find my pajamas anywhere (it turns out my little brother had stuffed them behind some godforsaken Tonka). My mother gave me an oversized shirt to wear instead, my father’s. I slept fitfully that night. At the most hopeless moments in that anxious fidgeting, I feared that my pajamas, which seemed so incidental, were in fact essential to my sleep—that it was they and not I that had licensed me the dreamland to which I had nightly become accustomed. And so I wrote out that midnight fear: a boy who never finds his pajamas, and so, never sleeps.
Image via The American Reader
(via nprbooks)
Looking Down on the World from Mont Blanc’s Aiguille du Midi
To see more photos and videos from atop the French Alps, visit the Aiguille du Midi location page.
In the Mont Blanc region of the French Alps sits a skyward-reaching peak called the Aiguille du Midi. The peak’s name translates as “Needle of Noon“ because, when viewed from the French town of Chamonix, it acts as a natural sundial.
Adventure seekers can easily ascend the precipitous mountain thanks to the Téléphérique de l’Aiguille du Midi, a cable car built in 1955 that makes a 9,209ft (2,807m) climb to the peak. Until recently, the Aiguille summit was home to a viewing platform, café and gift shop. In December 2013, however, a glass box called “Step Into the Void” opened to the public, offering thrill-seekers the opportunity to step out above a drop of 3,395ft (1,035m).